How to Use Nexus Repository and Helm for CI/CD

Source:-securityboulevard.com

Helm is the first and the most popular package manager for Kubernetes. It allows DevOps teams to version, distribute, and manage Kubernetes applications.

Although one can live with standard kubectl commands and Kubernetes manifest YAML files, when organisations work on microservice architecture — with hundreds of containers interacting with each other — it becomes a necessity to version and manage the Kubernetes manifests.

Helm is now becoming a standard for managing Kubernetes applications and a necessary skill for anyone working with Kubernetes.

Why Helm?
The obvious question is: Why do we need Helm? Let’s find out.

Helm makes templating applications easy
A Docker image forms a template for a Docker container. You can use one Docker image to create multiple containers from it.

The same wasn’t true for Kubernetes. You can’t reuse the manifest files easily. For instance, if you have to deploy two instances of PostgreSQL, you have to duplicate your manifest files.

Helm helps you manage it using charts and variables. You just need to create a generic PostgreSQL chart and use variables to deploy different instances in the form of releases.

Helm makes the versioning of Kubernetes applications possible
Developers initially used to create Kubernetes manifests using YAML files, which they then stored in source-code repositories.

The issue with this approach is the manifest isn’t semantically versioned. A source-code repository isn’t the right place to version your releases. You should always version your releases as packages. Helm solves this problem by packaging your application in a Helm chart, which makes it possible to have multiple versions of your chart stored in the Helm repository, and you can quickly rollout or rollback a release without building from a source.

Helm makes reusing and sharing possible
For Docker images, you can share your images on DockerHub — the (Read more…)

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Sonatype Blog authored by Gaurav Agarwal. Read the original post at: https://blog.sonatype.com/how-to-use-nexus-repository-and-helm-for-ci/cd